The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) will not abandon the people of this new country as inter-communal violence continues forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.
This is the message from the head of UNMISS, Hilde Johnson during a press conference in the country's capital, Juba on Tuesday.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is working to return approximately 40,000 South Sudanese nationals who have been stranded in transit camps in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, for nearly three years.

IOM is appealing for $20 million to cover the cost of flights for these people who have been living in makeshift squalid conditions with no access to water and sanitation and decent shelter.

Every four seconds there’s a new refugee or internally displaced person in the world, says UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

People continually flee to other countries — tens of thousands of Malians to Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso; thousands of Sudanese to South Sudan, and now well over one million and a half Syrians to neighboring countries.

• This week, South Sudan celebrated its second anniversary as an independent nation. UN envoy Hilde Johnson told the Security Council that the country has made progress in areas such as consolidating peace and addressing cases of arbitrary detention. However, says insecurity and other challenges still remain

"The history of Sudan's Abyei region is a history of conflict" says the Force Commander of the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNIFSA). However, says Major General Yohannes Tesfamariam, since the establishment of the mission in June 2011, the situation is relatively peaceful except for an incident in May this year.

A new programme in the Republic of South Sudan is helping vulnerable farmers to improve their livelihoods by boosting the quality of the seeds used to produce key crops.

The project, valued at more than $600 000 (EUR 500 000), will help to train farmers in the production, storage and marketing of quality seeds and cuttings for staple crops like sorghum, maize, cassava and cowpeas. It will also increase the availability of seeds to South Sudan’s most vulnerable farmers.